I especially love these lines: “We suffer from a surfeit of information on child development and a complete lack of information on mother development. “Mother development.” The phrase even sounds odd.”

To continue reading this post, please click over to Psyched in San Francisco!

A healthy couple creates safety for the kind of vulnerability that makes connection: confiding, remembering, revealing, knowing. And how wonderful this makes partnerships: true havens. This superpower is also what the philosopher Alain de Botton defines as empathy or “the capacity to connect imaginatively with the sufferings and unique experiences of another person.” [...]

Moms are my specialty, but I am writing today to make an association between therapists and moms. The day I worked with this mother on her first steps to reclaiming her relationship with herself, I spent the morning at an HIV+ Women’s Health Clinic from 8 to 12 seeing deeply troubled clients, then I saw private practice clients from 12:30-3:30; then rushed over to see my supervisor, then back to the office for several evening clients. I had my whole day planned out, down to the taxi I took to make supervision on time; and the important phone call squeezed in before a session with a client who is always a few minutes late. There was only one problem I realized by mid-day—I had not budgeted any time to get or eat food, all day. Many of my therapist friends and colleagues have told me of similar schedules, and when there is not a commitment to self-care, it is a big problem for therapists.

It was that day that the connection between mothering and therapizing hit me—both are based on nurturing others, both can tend towards an unhealthy martyrdom. I assert that both roles need a radical re-balancing program in the form of intensive, sumptuous, deep self-care for the nurturer. And the better the self-care, the better the mom or therapist will be at their job of caring for others. This is provable in the simplest of mind-body studies available to look into everywhere, but it is something I also know in my bones. When I am thinking, writing, resting, feeding myself really well, having sex, and laughing a lot, I am a great mom and a great therapist: I feel the creative energy and power that comes from a sense of flow and gratitude. From this place, giving feels natural and right. [...]

To read more, please click over to: psychotherapy.net

M O T H E R  N U R T U R E

“Why do I feel so exhausted? Everyone else seems to be fine.”

“Where is the sparkly, creative woman I used to be?”

“I am so irritable lately! how can I feel better?"

Moms: Are you feeling a little burned out these days? Is your to-do list running your emotional life? Would you like to feel more perspective and grace? more humor? more spirit? less irritation and discouragement?

Join us for a revitalizing support group this spring:

Saturdays from 10-11:30am, April 20th through May 25th (skipping May 18th) 
$300 for 6 week class; *$200 early bird price if you sign up and pay before April 6th.

To join, send me an email at elizabethceceliasullivan@gmail.com  telling me a little bit about yourself.

You can pay by paypal at: www.elizabethceceliasullivan.com/paypal-policies/

Your kids and your partner will thank you!

Why A Mom's Group? Women are often caught in a bind where the nurturing we provide our kids is drawn directly from the well that refreshes our own souls. It is challenging to have meaningful work, love with partners, friendships, creativity, and other elements of a great life when we are mothers. Join us to explore the joy, resentment, creativity, anger, longing, sweetness and the great confusing bind that is 2013 motherhood. We will talk about our experiences, read some brilliant mothers-who-think, and make a circle of connection and support to help one another find more pleasure and balance in our lives.

Past Participants Are Saying:

“This group gave me the chance to connect with other moms in a non-judgmental space to talk—something I’ve been needing for a while! Elizabeth’s facilitation was insightful, compassionate and funny.”

-Katherine S.

“I felt more “ok” after this group—proud to be a Mama in my own way.”

-Lauren B.

http://www.elizabethceceliasullivan.com/paypal-policies/

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I was a bit shocked for a second. It sounded so harsh! Though I also instantly recognized it as true. I did say that, and I did feel it--especially back then when I had a newborn and a 4 year old. The weekends, when my 4 year old was home from his stimulating, creative preschool, were when I really strained to survive. Nowadays it feels different, but back then, the weekend seemed to stretch from the middle of the night wakeups through 5 am breakfasts in the dark, and on and on for hours of unstructured, unprogrammed time. Paradoxically, it was hard for us to get organized to do much, and yet we were all a bit stir crazy and bored after hours at home. Every time it seemed like we might head out for a walk or a beach trip or music class, someone would melt down, freak out, or need a nap (either the kids, my partner, or me).

“Jeeze, I did say that!” I agreed with a bit of chagrin.

“Oh, it just made me instantly trust you!” she laughed.

To read more, please go to: Psyched in San Francisco

Writing in a journal is often one of the first things I suggest to people who come to see me to talk about their troubles. This is because writing frees the mind to express what seems unsayable--and to offer catharsis and healing when we are suffering.

One reason writing in a journal is so transformative is that it helps us to acknowledge our so called “negative” feelings (envy, rage, disgust, hurt) and to see them instead as messages from our unconscious.

For instance, feelings of anxiety are often repressed fear; irritability can be said to be unexpressed anger or hurt--and depression often hides unexpressed sadness or anger. Writing about these feelings lets them be acknowledged, which leads to shift and change.

It might seem like a burden or work at first, but try to approach the exercise playfully--do not worry about spelling or grammar, just go! There are very simple ways to direct your writing to help you heal your stress and feel better.

Here’s how to begin:

1) Sit down with a notebook or at your computer (disable the Internet while you do this).
2) Set a timer for 20 minutes.
3) Write nonstop about whatever is troubling you most. Do not censor yourself at all, do not go back and correct what you’ve written, just keep your hand moving forward on the page as quickly as you can.
4) Repeat this exercise every day for at least five days.

It may be helpful to discuss what you wrote with a trusted friend or therapist.

Envy sucks. It’s one of the worst feelings to feel. But like many of the so-called seven deadly sins and other human feelings, I believe it brings us gifts if we examine the feelings instead of stuffing them down.

In my work with mothers, I find a particular, stinging brand of envy--envy of other moms. Many great mothers are convinced that they are the only one who is feeling so overwhelmed and isolated--so cross and so exhausted. What I hear goes something like, “I am at the end of my rope. What is wrong with me? I wanted kids so much; I used to be crazy about my husband. Everyone else seems to be managing just fine, they seem happy.”

Sometimes material things stand in for the feelings, “they can afford so much! we are barely scraping by”; but most often what I find is that moms really envy the way that other moms seem to feel: calm, happy and satisfied.

Unfortunately, those other moms are totally lying.

Just kidding! But not exactly. Ok, there may be a few perfect moms, and I am sorry they are all in my your kid’s classroom. But mostly we are all putting a good face on it, pulling it together and getting it done. While you know yourself that you have not showered and you whisper-yelled “thanks for nothing!” at your husband just before you showed up for your kid’s play, few other people are picking up on this--they are too preoccupied by their boss’s irritation and their kid’s recent headaches. As someone who listens very carefully to moms all day I am willing to stake my life that this is true: women are telling me what they don’t want anyone else to know. And the very moms confessing painful envy are often envied themselves by others without really knowing it.

Want to read more? Click over to Psyched in San Francisco

Earlier this summer when tide-pooling with my 9 and 5 year old sons, I looked up from my own explorations and watched as they ran swiftly over the slippery seaweed-covered coral rocks. In a flash they were totally out of reach and out of reach of the sound of my voice, which longed to call out, "Stop! Be careful! You’ll slip! Don't fall!"

The inner film festival of motherhood anxiety began to crank out some choice movies for me, their faces covered with blood--teeth chipped out; screaming and thrashing as I attempted to half-carry them up the steep hike to the parking lot. Or how about a glittering sneaker wave covering their golden heads and flailing arms.  Would I dive into the surf to at least die trying to save them?

I tried to end the festival though I could not stop watching them run and call to each other as I picked my way across the seaweed in my bright red chucks. I was trying to reach them to be near enough to be useful, if needed, without interrupting their play.

Later, recounting the scene to my mentor, Kim Chernin, she said, "your worry, spoken aloud, would hurt them more than falling on the rocks." (She really talks like that.)

"I want the children to be free, and I want to be free", I wrote later, "and therefore we must risk the worst kind of death and disaster. But what do I mean? Why do I fantasize that my worry contributes to their real safety? It doesn’t. We are always risking tragedy, just in living. I know. I know! Cars, armed psychopaths stalking elementary schools, some coming epidemic or a global-warming revenge tidal wave. It’s real and it’s not real--the worry. But my task is to ‘shelter the kids from my own childishness’; as Alain de Botton puts it. To be a grown up and know when to gently end my worrying and to try to be present.”

So worry. A mother worrying. The anxiety of a mother. And intimacy. A child growing into a young person, into a full person, and a shifting relationship--loosening control. I think I can say Jonah did not need ever to perceive one more second of anxiety from me about himself. My partner and I had got him through a difficult birth, breastfeeding and weaning, early life, most of elementary school, and a thousand small milestones of personhood. My job now was to accurately read the signals for how to let him be free in the doses he was ready to handle. That had always been my job, existentially, but before I was also wiping his butt and carrying him everywhere.

So this was a new job for me. I had always attempted to curb cautionary worry to Jonah as best I could, but that was in integration with a lot of limit-setting, teaching rules of safety (in a city you have to really teach the kid not to run in the street, for example) and occasional off-the-leash mother-worry, "Oh My God; don't touch that! Come down from there!"

How to help kids experiment and risk, how to risk yourself, without being self-absorbed and abandoning, or rigid, distant and judgmental, or "helicopter”-ing--the worst epitaph now thrown at parents. I think the answer lies in the quality of intimacy and presence with your kid and your ability to respond to the relationship as it unfolds. And also lots of therapy.

Jonah himself is really the one showing me how to let him go while staying present and connected. For instance, he now pursues a fanatical love of basketball that bemuses and mystifies me--I listen to his feverish talk but I cannot yet generate my own spark. And yet, I like to hear him muse so passionately on LeBron James; I like to cheer him on sometimes when he plays and take an iphone video of him as he announces his own game. (“Metcalf is going for the layup! And it’s good!!!!”)

The other night he poked his head into my room as I was writing this essay and grinned to me: “Love you Mama.” Then he shut the door and ran off. I felt like I had slipped off balance and fallen on some psychic seaweed. So he will also maintain a spontaneous connection with me if we stay close: another place I can give up control and put aside my worry and enjoy the walk, the day, the rocks, the beach and the boys themselves--in danger and safe, too.

But the joy that could also be a part of it all wasn’t there (well not enough), the humor, the perspective. What could explain this?

Well, time for the self and for renewal was almost completely missing.

I suggested several things and I think they apply to all parents: 1) whatever you budget for babysitting, double it this month; 2) whatever you do to take care of yourself, double that too 3) stretch out for some activities outside of your “comfort zone” (this requires some self-reflection) and 4) treat your self-neglect as an emergency that is negatively affecting your marriage and your parenting, because it is.

The more you care for yourself and invest in your own renewal and refreshment; the better-able to be present with your family you will be.

What is the value of your marriage? Your own sanity? Your relationship with your children? It’s difficult to put a price on these things--and yet there is a price--it is the price of a good babysitter.

Many parents I speak with initially feel that it’s too selfish to spend time by themselves for no special purpose but refreshment and fun, to date their spouse, or to spend time on self-reflection and self-care. For these folks, the price of a babysitter includes the extra charge of a feeling of selfishness or depriving kids of something they need. And for moms, there really is still a half-understood, unconscious idea in operation that women must not put themselves first, but instead must care for others before ourselves.

But as a therapist for parents, I have found that the evidence is irrefutable--if we put time into figuring out what really refreshesus , and commit to doing it, we fall in love again with our kids and our spouse.

There are lovely, warm, child-psychology majors and responsible high school students saving for college just waiting for the chance to be adored by your kids and to take them to the park for a few hours.

Perfectionism is soul-crushing. So find a good babysitter and do something that refreshes your soul. It’s an emergency.